


Fortune's wheel

by mirthful_sonnet



Category: 15th Century CE RPF, The White Queen (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, I Can't Believe I Wrote This
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 06:49:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4950673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirthful_sonnet/pseuds/mirthful_sonnet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Turn, fortune, turn thy wheel, and lower the proud;<br/>Turn thy wild wheel thro’ sunshine, storm, and cloud;<br/>Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fortune's wheel

Time was a vague and wretched thing for Elizabeth. These past months were only a display of images that she watched as a lingering spectator. She never regarded herself as one to dwell upon her judgement, she had always been a passionate girl who acted without doing much thinking. But this small unbearably quiet place inspired the most aggravating thoughts. 

The princess takes a deep breath, inhaling the air saturated in cold. Her face is blank, wishing to turn the offensive pretty morning into a storm. She wanted the world to feel as she did.

In the distance there is a sudden movement, a rift in what was the picture of a silent morning shrouded in winter snow. The melody of tolling bells start, resonating along every corner of the abbey, their lively peals entering through the window of her small cell and echoing her heartbeats. The walls are cold and faded, the air heavy with the smell of wax, the simple hearth casts shadows upon an ivory figure of the virgin Mary and her son. She never moves but she finally discerns the distant movement in the tower as two children that are tolling the bells in a steady up and down swing.

Dark blue eyes fix onto the two tiny figures engaged in their dance, emitting chimes that will surely be followed by every existing bell in London, fading and returning, their shapes rising and falling…

_Rising and falling…_

Those words had been a constant companion to her, clung to her like perfume but just like that its essence would easily fade away. It was a wonder that those words would have such an accursed reminder to her while she was still in the prime of her life. A moment where she should be enjoying all the promises and luxuries that she deserved, all the luxuries that Richard _promised_ her.

Her heart quenches when she thinks of him; Richard, whose death she cannot seem to stop from haunting her dreams. Her lover, for whom she spent whatever energy she had left in showing how much she loved him on that foreboding night before the battle.

She recalls his silence and how she did whatever she could to comfort him before being stripped away from her arms. He had sent her back without a word in the morning, with the assurance of his love and in that moment she needed nothing else, not even the most extravagant crown in the kingdom.

But now she stood with this sad parody of the life she envisioned with Richard, her cool hands clutching his books in her lap. Her cousin Maggie was adrift on why Elizabeth appeared so stricken once she stretched the group of books into her hands before the departure to London, where Elizabeth would find out what would be her fate. Would she be Queen as everyone suspected or discarded off like a useless leftover?

_Uncle Richard kept these books with him…he gave them to me but I don’t really want them, not my taste you see, I think you’ll make better use of them while you’re in the Tower, will you take them please?_

It was of no use to dwell upon what could have been, on how the bells that were ringing on this morning could have been ringing for her and Richard’s wedding instead of the present one. Whatever girlish fancies she had were reduced to this bleak, shuttered space where she could find little ease, especially with the familiar troubles that came back to her mind. All of these conflicting emotions were too much to bear, her gift of the sight was not as prominent as it had once been and she had never possessed her mother's talent of expecting things, both good and evil, before they came.

_“What’s this card about mémé?” A five year old Elizabeth had asked her grandmother Jaquetta, as they both sat in the darkened cloisters of Westminster’s Abbey, with rows of colorful cards spread before them in the surface of a spare pew. At the time Elizabeth’s innocent mind was clear of any worries but Jaquetta’s was heavy apprehension on what would be the outcome of the decisive battle between her son in law and Warwick._

_The card pointed by her granddaughter displayed a fair woman spinning a wheel, with a blindfold covering her eyes and the golden words that spelled “Rota Fortunae” stretching in flawless cursive over the top._

_“That’s the wheel of fortune my dear, a most complicated thing for your innocent mind to comprehend,” Jaquetta replied, quickly being answered by a frown from Elizabeth, making her laugh faintly at the girl’s insistence, she was by all means her mother’s daughter. The older woman continued, “That woman you see there is the goddess Fortuna, she spins the wheel of fortune at all times, sometimes she may remain in the same flow but she can also change positions and rhythms when you least expect it, one day you may…” Jaquetta trailed off, thinking on how she could explain to her five year old granddaughter these unsettling themes, “One day you may be at your most happy, that is when the wheel rises but other days…other days you can be very sad as well, that is when Fortuna changes positions and the wheel falls.”_

_“Why doesn’t she stop changing places?”_

_“Because that is not how life works cherie”_

_Elizabeth wrinkles her forehead, not understanding, “But mémé, is there a way to avoid the wheel’s fall?”_

_Jaquetta smiles, “Of course my dear, but to do so you have to always remember that to receive good things in life you must first do good things for others and treat them as you want to be treated, because otherwise…your mistakes come back in one way or another…”_

She hadn’t known what her dear grandmother had meant by that, God rest her soul, at least not at the time. She wondered if this was her punishment for what she had done with Richard, but it didn’t seem fair that they had to be punished for loving each other, there were surely worse things she could have done. Throughout her life she had been depraved of certainty, been in danger since she had use of her senses and been partly hidden from the things of the world. The moment when Richard came and took her out of sanctuary changed everything, it was like a glorious portal into a world of safety, of assurance, of love. The kind of things she longed for. Richard’s sudden attentions were an overwhelming comfort and she accepted them wholeheartedly, basking in her newly found pleasure. But now the wheel had fallen for her, it couldn’t possibly get worse than this.

The peals continue steadily to the point that she thinks that they are mocking her, reminding her of the place she would never take. After all, the resounding chimes of bells were for her younger sister.

Despite her discontent, Elizabeth allows herself a small smile as she imagines her calm, headstrong sister in this moment. Layers upon layers of white and gold velvet, looking like she had sprouted from the snowy ground as a rare flower. Waiting upon the doors of Westminster's Abbey, ready to be given away to her betrothed.

_The bastard Tudor_

That spiteful nickname only took her back to the previous months, when she was heartbroken by her lover’s death, uncertain and apprehensive towards the possibility of being married to the usurper. Too caught up in her own pain to acknowledge the importance of putting a York on the throne, since it would not only establish union between the houses but it would bring her family back to grace.

That notion was not to be and she should have seen it from a distance, as everybody knew and still talked -she fervently wished they would stop talking- about the public declaration where Henry Tudor reversed their betrothal since enough proof was revealed to confirm her affair with Richard. Elizabeth had learned that in her kind of world there were people willing to sell their very souls for the slightest bit of favor or whatever truths they knew. And it was clear that Tudor needed to make his point come across in the most prominent way possible to make his excuse legitimate, which only shamed her further.

Henry Tudor wasn’t the monster she envisioned as soon as she learned of her lover’s defeat. She tried but still couldn’t associate that childish image with the glimpses she caught of this suspicious and appealing stranger that she had seen at her mother's manor. She still hated him, oh yes she hated him for stripping Richard away from her and for humiliating her the way he did, for secluding her in this place that appeared more God forsaken than a place of worship . As expected her family has been indignant once the event took place but their fears were in vain, for Henry promised himself to another York, another Rivers girl during his declaration. And so the turning tide thrust the young Cecily into the prospect of marriage once again, brought her to the succession, to the impending union between the warring houses, and to Henry Tudor.

She could not tell much from what she saw of Cecily and Henry’s interactions back at her mother’s Coldharbor house. She never blamed Cecily for the humiliation she had to go through, no she couldn't have resented her for something that was out of her control. But that soon stopped overtime, with Elizabeth noticing how her sister would crawl into bed with her face neutral but her eyes teeming with unspoken things. Elizabeth only caught small glimpses of how the young pair were evolving from strangers into companions in their privacy from Cecily’s change in demeanor. She found it impossible to read Henry on the other hand, as this cold man basically regarded her as nothing more than an unresponsive ornament, an empty vase to which he barely spared a glance, a disgusting reminder of the previous king. It was kind of ironic, not his treatment of her but the fact that she had always been known as the fairest of her sisters, her father’s jewel, and yet the welsh dragon had reached for the wallflower of the family and not the rose. Elizabeth begrudgingly suspected that her sister would find affection with this man that she loathed for taking away all of her chances of happiness. She couldn’t say she didn’t resent her sister for that, she would regain her family’s honor but to actually share and try to form a friendship with this so called king was out of place for Elizabeth.

None of that mattered now, the bells marked the end of a strife to which she had been a sore witness since she was an infant. Now her sister was married to the king, their union would bear the standard of a new era, celebrations will take place, and in the sunrise of the next day the pair would wake up joined as one.

What would she give to be able to look at her sister now, see how beautiful she must look. She hadn’t had the slightest idea if it was possible to see her again. It was that thought that brought Elizabeth’s present troubles back into her conscience, they not only had to do with the lack of faith of seeing her sister again but the terrible way in which they said goodbye to each other. The words went back and forth through her head like tedious echoes.

_Elizabeth’s constant crying had diminished over the past days but her inactiveness left her sister Cecily with the task of arranging whatever was necessary for Elizabeth’s departure._

_Not that she had much to take to an abbey anyway, Elizabeth thought as she entered her room, where she saw Cecily sitting in a chair with a book in her lap and a cluster of chests around her. When she heard her older sister’s footsteps she immediately raised her head and her hands quickly hid a group of small papers inside the book, which as Elizabeth came closer made her realize that it was one of Richard's books._

_“What are you doing with that?” she asked her sister, who remained silent without looking at her and stood up._

_Seeing Richard’s book in Cecily’s hands flickered something in her, she did not like that at all and that’s what made her snatch it from her hands, the abrupt movement leaving Cecily with the group of papers hanging precariously on her hand. Elizabeth hadn’t seen those before, they were probably hidden in some part of the book and she hadn’t noticed them yet. She did not pay attention to that, as she was mostly thinking about why her sister was going through her things._

_“This is private and you have no right to snoop in and inspect my things.”_

_“I’m sorry,” Cecily said in a low voice, “I think I’ve arranged all that I could for your journey,”_

_Elizabeth scoffed at that, “Isn’t it enough that **he** has stripped me from everything I’ve loved? I’m surprised he’s let me keep my skin!”_

_Cecily stopped pacing, coming near her, her face in clear distress, “Don’t you think I’m unhappy too Bess? I wanted to keep you with me for as long as life endured but I have no such power, please don’t let us part like this.”_

_“Just when I thought nobody else could discard me from their care, my sister also betrays me…”_

_“No…what…what are you talking about? You know I did everything I could to keep you with me, you must know that Bess!” Cecily says gravely, her eyes filling with tears._

“ _But not enough! There is nothing left for me anymore, I’m sent to rot while you frolic with that bastard! That murderer!” she shouts, making Cecily pause, her eyes wide with incredulity._

_“Murderer you say, last time I thought about it Henry wasn’t the one who made a joke out of our family.” The brunette retorts trying to keep her voice steady, with what was a terrible pain for her sisters departure and accusations mingling with pure outrage, “You should be grateful that he will at least let me provide for you, if you had only bothered to use your head on these past months you wouldn’t be in this situation!”_

_“So now you blame me when it is you who’s marrying that usurper, and you dare talk of Richard that way,” Elizabeth accuses, her face red and swollen._

_“ Oh his ghost could appear before me and I wouldn’t hesitate to say more, if anyone is shaming this family it is you for defending the man who killed our uncle Anthony and Rich!” Cecily exclaims with a break in her voice, referring to their half-brother Richard Grey._

_“That happened long ago, it was out of his control…”_

_“Ah you shameless and blind fool! You question my love for you and now I wonder if you even spare a thought to me and our family! Uncle Richard may have treated us kindly but I never forgot and never will forget the danger in which he put us, did you forget by any chance sister?” Cecily whispers coming very close to Elizabeth, who stood with her eyes wide, partly at the things Cecily was saying and at the oddity of her usually collected sister exposing her true feelings, “Did you forget that he forced us to flee into sanctuary? Did you forget about how he declared us bastards and our mother a whore? Did you forget about Thomas having to run for his life? Did you forget Rich and Anthony? Did…” Cecily pauses, her red face contorting in pain before fixing Elizabeth with her gaze, “Did you forget our brothers?''_

_“That wasn’t-no he never killed our brothers…” Elizabeth stammers, to which her sister sighs and shakes her head._

_“He might as well have, in one way or another.”_

_“You…”Elizabeth hisses, “You’d never understand, how could you? You know nothing about love and you never will.”_

“ _Was love such a vile thing as to make you crawl into our uncle's bed while his queen lay dying?” Cecily says, “If love truly retains such conceit then I don’t want it.”_

_The slap from Elizabeth was expected, which was why Cecily did not look shocked in the slightest but only stood numbly, her empty eyes elsewhere._

_Mother of God. Elizabeth's heart froze at the mention of the former queen. That sad dainty creature she had pitied so often._

_“You don’t know anything, if the battle had turned out differently I would be queen and I surely would have never treated you the way you are treating me, we have no say in who we love it just happens, Richard loved me and I loved him.” She says and her sister shakes her head miserably._

_“He used you Elizabeth, used you as a device for him to deliver his spite towards us and Henry as well, he…he truly loved his queen…if you only knew…”_

_Elizabeth’s eyes flash at her sister, her hands shaking at the memory of her quarrel with Lady Beaufort._

_He’s using you…_

_“Why do you still pretend to torment me so?... you know how much I loved him,” she says shakily, remembering his words of devotion, their secret moments in court when she was everything but his queen, their last night together before the battle._

_Cecily’s face contorts again and she fixes Elizabeth with her gaze._

_“There is none more blind than those who refuse to see..” she says with a lost look in her red face before out of nowhere, she flings the papers clutched in her hand forward, the worn things hitting Elizabeth and ricocheting in a flutter of white and tawny papers looking like falling birds._

_“Read those when you feel like gaining some shame, you and I have nothing more to say to each other.” Cecily says bitterly, not bothering to look back when she leaves, the only sound being the rustle of her skirts until there is nothing but silence and her sister standing still with a pool of papers surrounding her like a hem._

Her nail beads drifted across the raspy pages of the book in her hands, slowly opening the text. How many times had Richard’s hand drifted across these pages? Trembling fingers turned page after page, taking in their yellowing color, and pausing once she reached the very last one, where her name was scribbled under that of Richard’s, but that wasn’t the thing that caught her attention, for just below the cursive signature there was the group of papers that she had caught her sister reading in the day she last saw her.

They were like small letters, all bunched up into a clump of paper and dry ink. Her hands undid the knot as if it were a closed flower, pulling the first paper that she could slip out. The surface was wrinkled and it was certainly scribbled from top to bottom since it was such a small paper, and with her eyes trapped onto the message and her heart feeling as if it could fall off its place she recognized Richard’s handwriting. This was written to someone. She started reading.

 _"My dearest Anne_ , _even in your unbearable absence I deem myself_ _so impertinent and insane to dare and write letters that I know will never reach you. The pretender comes nearer and each day I find myself wanting to join you my love, but who am I fooling? Heaven is not a worthy place for a soul as wretched as mine, the number of sins I’ve committed could rival the hairs I have on my scalp. These past events have made me do things that I would have never even considered back when I was just a duke, loyal to my brother and very much in love with you, which will never cease to be true. But life is such a misleading course full of surprises and I’ve reduced myself into a scum of a man who’s betrayed everything he’s stood for. Every day I find myself questioning whether it’d be better if I just took my own life and tried to join you, hoping that you’d receive me with open arms. Would you receive me Anne? I have nothing to lose now, but by whatever honor I have left I won’t take God’s most precious gift into my own hands and I will only leave it at the mercy of the upcoming battle, for that is something I can’t forget either. I wonder which is worse, the pain that I brought you or the delusion I have inspired in my poor niece? She is hungry for affection and her vulnerability has made her an easy target for these games I’m still playing, I pity her when I envision the innocent little girl that adored me as her uncle but then I hate her when I see her in the present, for she is the image of that damn witch that’s made my life a living hell. We both have woven our webs and Bess is just tiny fly caught in it. I miss you Anne, need you as I need my limbs, if I only had the certainty that you’ll receive me I would gladly leave this earth. I’ve had little solace and much to regret in these past few days and I’m so lost. Oh Jesu I don’t even know why I’m writing this, or perhaps I do know, for I want you to receive my words whether it be through these useless scribbles or the prayers I deliver nightly to you. You once told me that we had each other, yes you had always been my sole substance on this kingdom of sin, helped me wear this crown of thorns and always stood at a higher level than me, always willing to help me up. Give me a sign my love, and I’ll do whatever I can to try and reach you."_

Elizabeth crumples the letter in her hand, her fingers stained with the ink wet by her tears as she came face to face with something that, in a dreadful way, she already knew. That her uncle had lied to her, and _that_ he certainly did. Had made a fool of her, pulled the strings and played her like a puppet. A bitter laugh escapes Elizabeth as she finally recalls her foolishness, her childish delusions that blinded her too much with their false promise of love to the point that she couldn’t see the strain behind her uncle’s displays, the shadows under his eyes after Anne’s death, the emptiness behind his words, the way he treated her body as that of a whore, taking what he needed and then pushing her away. It was as if she had spent her life with a veil over her head only to now have it pushed back and come face to face with her reality in the crudest way. There were many other letters, filled with more words of love and desperation dedicated to his dead wife, the woman who stole Richard’s heart and kept it for eternity with her.

Everything slowly turned into a cacophony of bell tolls and her grandmother’s voice as Elizabeth shot up from her seat with a loud cry, tearing every letter and throwing it to the burning logs.

This was how the bottom of the spinning wheel felt like.

_"You have to always remember that to receive good things in life you must first do good things for others and treat them as you want to be treated, because otherwise…your mistakes come back in one way or another…”_

She kept going with her activity, the ripping sounds from the papers mingling with those of the cracks of the fire and her screams, uncaring if anyone heard, feeling her heart turn to pure stone. She wailed brokenly, tore at her shortened blond hair until she had no more voice, her body falling numb, with no witnesses to her plight but the pale sun in the sky and the Virgin with her son, whose painted childish eyes seemed to look on in sadness. 

The broken princess regained her consciousness a while later, the peals of the bells fading along with her anger and grief. It was in that moment that Elizabeth silently decided that whatever belonged to her past would be forgotten, and so, staring numbly at the fire made hazy by her tears she decided that this was a much better place than the world outside, the world that had failed her too many times, here she would find the purest love of all.

Still sniffling, Elizabeth stood on shaking legs and stripped off her nightgown, throwing it in a heap to a corner, standing completely bare, clad only in the pale light of the day before the image of the virgin Mary and her son, going to her knees and prostrating herself in sign on penitence.

“Deus meus, ex toto corde pænitet me ómnium meórum peccatórum…” she prayed, her bloodshot eyes fixing on the figure’s peaceful expression as she continued, as if offering understanding and acceptance, “…ideo fírmiter propóno, adiuvánte grátia tua, de cétero me non peccatúrum peccandíque occasiónes próximas fugitúrum.” She finished, with her body feeling very light suddenly, as if a tremendous weight had been lift off her and she smiled tremulously.

Her grandmother had mentioned that mistakes came back in one way or another, yet, she never mentioned the possibility of moving past them and starting anew, no, Elizabeth was left to find that out herself and so in her small and simple cellar she felt reborn again. She would lead a new life dedicated to God. It would take a while for her to accept all of her sins and griefs and try her best to amend them, but time was all she needed and plenty of time she had.

The sun would still shine, the flowers would bloom and her sister would find love. Life would go on and the wheel would keep spinning. At the moment she took little comfort in this last thought, but the promise of a tomorrow bearing the peace she longed for set her in a new kind of determination to find it, and for now that was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> So some things I'd like to say:
> 
> First the translations of the prayer: *O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee  
> *I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin.
> 
> The summary comes from Idylls of the King: Song from the Marriage of Geraint by Lord Alfred Tennyson.
> 
> I, as many others, disliked the whole Elizabeth and Richard plot line and interpreted it as if he was using her because to be honest they were given next to zero development and the acting reflects it though the writing tries to tell another thing. I think Richard was the total d*ckhead in the situation and it was all his fault since in both the books and the show he seems to be taking advantage of his niece's naivety for his own political ends, or at least what Philippa Gregory believes is a genius political end when it actually isn't. 
> 
> And I'm sure there are many deviations here from history despite being an AU, because I don't really know what was Elizabeth's location after Sheriff Hutton, I read that she spent some time in her mother's Coldharbour house so I made reference to Henry's courting of Cecily right there. Also I refer to her as a princess in one part but I'm not really sure if she can be considered one being in a convent, so I left it that way. In addition, if this had actually happened I think Henry's wedding would have taken way longer to take place. And just in case, the books mentioned did exist, which some people have used as source to speculate on an affair between Elizabeth and her uncle since she wrote her name in the books as well as his motto I believe, which is just weird. People wrote their identification in books back then and they still do that nowadays. Also a lot of Richard's belongings were destroyed when Tudor came to the throne, I don't think Elizabeth wanted her new valuable books to be destroyed as well, but people just love to come up with the silliest theories. And I also see the issue of his motto to be simply a display of respect and perhaps even fondness, he was still her family and an anointed king and I don't think Elizabeth forgot that. In this I used those books for the story's purposes. Anyways, this is a fanfic, and it's not meant to be perfectly accurate by any means.
> 
> Pardon the long rant as well as any mistakes you might catch, this is so lame but I hope you didn't find it so awful lol Until the next update! ^^


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